Alter to our ancestors: bringing love into my life even now

My ancestors – the past few generations of them anyway – were an interesting bunch… to put it politely. There was amazing talent there and some very special gifts to be sure, but as people… well, they were nothing any compassionate, loving human being would want to emulate. If you come to my house, you will see one small picture of my mother with my kids but nothing like an altar to her. I’ll say this for my mother, at least she tried.

That said, I do have an ancestors altar in my home and it is overseen by the spirit of my husbands’ mother.

I’m an empath; I read people first through the tone of their voice and their eyes; the day that I met my husband, he’d just been diagnosed with a detached retina, leaving him temporarily with one good eye for me to read. We were standing in the kitchen area of the home he’d built, talking; I looked into that one good eye and instantly saw how much his mother had loved him. He was a good man. I could tell; there was not even the tiniest question in my mind: he was the product of pure love.

It wasn’t long before we knew that we were meant for each other. I’d had to work for it and he’d had to wait for it, but it was clear. I knew, from seeing what I’d seen in his one good eye, that I owed it to his mother to love him as much as she had, to take him as he is, body, mind, soul, spirit, quirks and gifts and flaws. I told him that and he told me that she would have approved.

Later, as we got to know each other, sharing our pasts, I discovered that he had been one of those exceedingly challenging children, one that even before he was old enough for school, seemed destined to find ways to make trouble; he was what was often called back then “a handful.” I learned that his father, too, who cared for him during the day when his mother worked, was also kind and gentle and patient with him. Both parents provided him with sensible, caring discipline that his young mind accepted for the guidance that it was intended to be.

His parents, product of the depression, had deceased long before I met Robert and his home was furnished largely with the furniture that had been in their home, furniture he’d grown up with. Among the smaller treasures he’d inherited were two small bronze figurines, a mermaid and a crocodile with its mouth quite wide open. The mermaid seemed something that any woman might resonate with but the crocodile told me that this woman was likely deeper than her small boy child had been aware of.

I asked if I might place them on a small altar I wanted to create in honor of my spiritual roots in the earth where I’d spent so much time as a child, escaping a harsh reality. I settled both mermaid and crocodile in among my most treasured rocks and crystals and spiritual tools. He was delighted that his mother’s treasures had become mine.

Now she watches over my morning universal connections, my yoga and meditation and I bless her every day for the love she gave to the man who would become the first man I ever experienced pure love with, at the age of 64.

Victoria Pendragon, BFA, DD is a writer, poet, artist and empath; she is una semilla besada. Find her website here.